The appliance of science

A Livermore company is using high-powered laser technology developed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab to make metal parts like airplane wings and steam turbine blades stronger, safer and more energy efficient.

Collaborations like it could have the same effect on the Tri-Valley economy.

Metal Improvement Co. uses a process called laser peening to pre-stress metal and make it less susceptible to cracks. The process can also help bend and stretch metal into a curve or other complex shapes, while strengthening it — which allows more efficient designs of titanium, aluminum and steel parts.

“Basically, we can make a laser work like a hammer and compound the metal,” said Lloyd Hackel, vice president for advanced technologies, who worked for 27 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab before following the laser technology he helped develop to Metal Improvement Co. “Compressed stress can do a couple of things: It keeps cracks from starting and from growing because the cracks only grow when they’re under tension.”

The technology has almost limitless potential applications, and the company’s client list is expanding rapidly. Customers include Boeing Corp., Rolls-Royce Corp. and Siemens. And Metal Improvement has 11 lasers at different locations, including Livermore, three in the United Kingdom where Rolls-Royce makes jet engines, one in Singapore, and one in Palmdale, Calif., where its laser is hammering the F-22 fighter jet for the U.S. Air Force.

Commercializing research

It’s exactly the kind of thing Lawrence Livermore Lab has been working to do more of — to transfer its discoveries to the commercial market so companies can make use of the science discovered there. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that economic development groups in the Tri-Valley want to see more of — lab technology spinning out of the labs and into companies that grow jobs and pay taxes that boost the area.

“We firmly believe the Tri-Valley has all the right stuff to be the next Silicon Valley,” said Roger Werne, deputy director of the industrial partnerships office at Lawrence Livermore Lab. The lab has more than 100 licensing agreements active now, which generate $8.5 million annually to support research and development at the lab. In addition, the lab hosts a monthly webinar to introduce technologies to angel investing group Keiretsu Forum and also brings in a group of entrepreneurs quarterly to demonstrate technology that could become the basis for a company or product.

Werne said the lab wants to be an economic hub for the Tri-Valley, though he admits, “We can’t control where the entrepreneurs ultimately go.”

Hackel said Metal Improvement Co., now a subsidiary of Curtiss-Wright Corp., still cooperates with lab scientists on its next-generation technology: making the lasers faster and more powerful. The access to the top minds in laser technology keeps Metal Improvement rooted in the Tri-Valley. Metal Improvement has grown to 45 employees in Livermore and another 40 in the UK with others moving with its lasers, which it ships in 18-wheeler trailers, to its big customers’ facilities.

Technology at work

At Metal Improvement’s Livermore headquarters, a robot picks up a thin turbine blade about a foot long and holds it in front of a laser enclosed behind thick sound-absorbing walls and a laser-proof glass window. While the lasers are infrared — and not visible to the human eye — visitors can hear the machine-gunlike fire of the laser as it blasts 1,000 megawatts of power — the same amount produced by a nuclear power plant — at the blade. The laser blasts the blade in tiny pulses of 20 billionths of a second, compressing the atoms within. The surface of the blade at the end of the process has a subtle waffle pattern, each square laser shot outlined in perfect rows. Tests show that after laser peening, the blades will last 10 times longer without cracking.

“We’re the only ones in the world who can fire a laser many times a second at those powers,” Hackel said.

Curtiss-Wright, based in Parsippany, N.J., worked with the lab under a cooperative research and development agreement to develop the laser peening technology for metal applications from 1996 to 2002. Then in 2002, the company licensed that technology and began commercializing it at its subsidiary Metal Improvement Co. in Livermore.

The process isn’t always easy when government bureaucracy is involved. Hackel found it difficult to balance everything while still employed as a lab scientist with major responsibilities working on the National Ignition Facility, which aims to create nuclear fusion.

“There was a bit of a strain because in order to do this (laser peening at Metal Improvement) people at the lab thought you weren’t doing mission-specific work for the lab,” Hackel said.

Eventually, Hackel retired from the lab to focus all of his efforts on laser peening at Metal Improvement Co.

Winning over customers

Metal Improvement has had to prove to major aerospace companies that its technology made parts more reliable — and then get the stringent certifications from the FAA customers needed to be able to use the parts treated with laser peening longer than FAA stipulations allowed for parts that didn’t get laser peening. Metal Improvement demonstrated its technology on a wingless F22 fighter jet shipped to the Livermore research lab — they used a crane to turn it on its side to fit it through the cargo doors — and that led to work on those jets. It’s demonstrated its technology on many types of turbine blades and now has peened more than 10,000 for various customers, including Siemens.

David Segletes, a metallurgical engineer for Siemens Energy Inc. in Charlotte, N.C., said Metal Improvement’s laser peening process makes the blades on Siemens steam turbines more resistant to fatigue or damage by a factor of two.

Laser peening is also used to strengthen and shape the wings of 50 of the new Boeing 747-8 planes, giving each wing a more aerodynamic curve while improving the metal’s integrity. Boeing wouldn’t specifically comment on laser peening, saying its wing design is proprietary, but has said the new wing design contributes to a 16 percent reduction in fuel consumption on the new 747-8 compared to the 747-400.

After 10 years of development, Metal Improvement is starting to feel the winds shift. Hackel said, instead of coming to Metal Improvement to fix a problem after a part has failed, new customers are requesting laser peening for new parts to make them strong and resistant to failure on the front end.